[HN Gopher] KX Community Edition
___________________________________________________________________
KX Community Edition
Author : AUnterrainer
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-07-16 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.defconq.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.defconq.tech)
| fidotron wrote:
| > A quick look at the product licensing page reveals that KDB-X
| gives you up to 16GB of RAM, 4 secondary threads per process, and
| 8 IPC connections.
| willvarfar wrote:
| It also says it is not for production use.
| quantdev0 wrote:
| I see 'KDB-X is not yet intended for production use' in
| multiple places, presumably due to the preview nature of the
| software.
| kanungle wrote:
| Yes it says the preview is not intended for production.
| Once it exits preview there's nothing saying it can't be
| used in prod
| latenightcoding wrote:
| With the rise of LLM-coding do these specialized/niche languages
| lose their edge? (i.e: prototyping speed, job security, etc)
| therein wrote:
| In this case it is a little beyond specialized and niche. It is
| right to left too.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44498766
| AUnterrainer wrote:
| No LLM can write KDB yet
| pinewurst wrote:
| As most KDB code is proprietary, one wonders if there's even
| enough available code to train/steal from.
| AUnterrainer wrote:
| KDB code is as proprietary as java, python, C++ code found
| at other financial institutions. What's proprietary is the
| Q language. not the code you write with it
| coredog64 wrote:
| No "public" LLM can write KDB yet.
| starkparker wrote:
| Context for people lacking it:
|
| - Blog announcement: https://kx.com/blog/introducing-kdb-x-
| public-preview/
|
| - Product landing page: https://kx.com/products/introducing-kdb-
| x-public-preview/
| KerrAvon wrote:
| for anyone else looking for tl;dr on WTF KDB actually is, it's
| buried in the AI slop marketing text in the blog announcement:
| "KDB-X is [...] both a programming language and a database."
| leprechaun1066 wrote:
| The overview here is better than the marketing:
|
| https://code.kx.com/q4m3/0_Overview/
| kristjansson wrote:
| Link should be changed to this from the current blogslop
| alyandon wrote:
| I just tried to install the community edition and it fails
| claiming the license key generated by the site is invalid. Not a
| great onboarding experience.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| do you have a previous community edition installed?
|
| I ran into this than scanned up and saw some warnings about
| clearing your environment vars & re-sourcing your profile so it
| no longer points to the old QLIC/QHOME
| alyandon wrote:
| Nope - fresh install.
| optymizer wrote:
| What a confusing website. The website is named 'defcon', like the
| famous defense conference. What does 'defcon' have to do with Q?
| What even is Q?
|
| The landing page is uninformative. No explanation of what Q is.
| References ticks, doesn't mention what these are.
|
| The About page is filled with generic words and no substance - so
| much fluff.
|
| I couldn't tell if KDB-X is an exploit database for Defcon
| participants, or some other kind of specialized database, and at
| this point I'm so disappointed by this presentation that I lost
| interest in whatever this piece of software is or does.
|
| Luckily someone else on HN figured it out and commented with a
| TLDR, but I'd use this site as an example of how not to design
| websites.
| papercrane wrote:
| > The website is named 'defcon', like the famous defense
| conference.
|
| Both the defense conference and this are references to the
| military term DEFCON, that stands for "defense readiness
| condition". Q here is referring to the Q programming language
| that is built on top of KDB's K language.
|
| The website is a blog and learning resource for the Q language.
| AUnterrainer wrote:
| Thanks. Looks like at least someone could follow my thought
| process
| kristjansson wrote:
| It's a pretty terrible secondary source, BUT
|
| The topic is clearly of interest to the community, and isn't
| half the fun of HN learning about things other people are
| interested in, from the sources they deem acceptable? Why would
| you only want to read things that are immediately and totally
| legible to you, specifically?
| bfm wrote:
| TL;DR TOS
|
| Summary of the KX Community Edition License Agreement:
|
| Key Points:
|
| What you get:
|
| - Free license to use KX software for personal or internal
| business purposes only
|
| - No support or maintenance services included
|
| - Software provided "as is" without warranties
|
| Major restrictions:
|
| - NO commercial use
|
| - Cannot sell, distribute, or monetize any product that uses or
| depends on this software
|
| - Cannot bundle it with commercial products
|
| - Cannot reverse engineer, modify, or create derivative works
|
| - Cannot remove copyright notices or trademarks
|
| - Software may phone home to verify valid license
|
| Important limitations:
|
| - KX's liability capped at $100
|
| - They disclaim all warranties including fitness for purpose
|
| - You must delete software if agreement terminates
|
| - Subject to export control laws
|
| - KX can audit your compliance
|
| Legal terms:
|
| - Governed by New York law
|
| - You retain no IP rights in the software
|
| - Confidentiality obligations for 5 years
|
| - KX can terminate at any time
|
| Bottom line:
|
| This is a restrictive free license meant for evaluation/personal
| use only. Any commercial use or distribution is strictly
| prohibited. If you need commercial rights, you'll need a
| different license.
| Quitschquat wrote:
| What would be the closest open-source equivalent for this?
| Influx?
| AUnterrainer wrote:
| There's nothing that gets close to KDB. You can build an entire
| framework with just KDB
| alt187 wrote:
| OP cleverly avoided your question by hallucinating one about
| what could be done with KBD, but yeah.
|
| Influx is basically the same niche.
| anthk wrote:
| Free as in freedoom? Still not.
|
| So, klong for prototyping, and a libre build of 'j' for
| everything else.
| clausok wrote:
| Kx released a 32bit, free-for-commercial-use version in 2014 and
| then reversed course around a year later after banks and hedge
| funds surprised them by flocking to it for a large subset of
| their developers / dev machines.
|
| Hopefully they stick to it this time around. It's an incredible
| system. It's the only thing I've ever used, including Pandas,
| dplyr & Matlab, where someone could stand over my shoulder asking
| data analysis questions and I could answer them, on the fly.
|
| LLM's, though notoriously bad (so far) at KDB+/Q compared to
| other languages, are still a godsend for folks getting started. I
| recently returned to writing Q after being away from it for 8
| years and I've been amazed how good even Google's AI suggestions
| have been at helping with functions & queries.
|
| Getting started tip: try using Q strictly as a query language,
| avoid K. Do everything else (data shoveling, devops,...) with a
| different language.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Could you give an example of where it shines? I have had to
| answer many a SQL/pandas question with someone over my
| shoulder, so curious where you see the sharpest benefit.
|
| Admittedly, I am unlikely to learn this proprietary DSL, but
| always good to know what is the best tool for a job.
| AUnterrainer wrote:
| Q is not just a query language or a database. It's an array
| programming language with database capability. You can build
| an entire framework with just Q, from real-time streaming, to
| in memory database to on disk database. You can build all
| APIs and business logic around it. Because it's vector
| oriented and in memory it's faster than pretty much
| everything else, no loops required. I have seen a team of 15
| KDB developers build what would require an entire etrading
| department of 200+ developers
| leprechaun1066 wrote:
| Given Wes McKinney created Pandas for quantitative analysis,
| it's possible that Pandas wouldn't exist if AQR were paying
| for a q license.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-16 23:01 UTC)